Bad idea, indeed

Big seed marketing (1)

Philippe — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:54:30 +0000

Beyond the buzz, beyond the fact that the marketing rules may have changed, every communication plan has 3 variables:
The Reach: How many people will receive your message?
The “persuasion rate”: How many people will consider your message to be relevant to them?
The reproduction rate: How many people will be willing to forward your message?

The so-called Marketing 2.0 tells that you have to maximize the reproduction rate and use hypersegmentation to raise your relevance (persuasion rate)… I believe that marketing 3.0 will re-integrate reach to get the best out of the marketing equation.

Back from Dubai

Philippe — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:11:32 +0000

Mid december, I had the chance to be in Dubai for the new media event organized by IIR Middle East. I spoke about big seed marketing. I realize that my presentation was perhaps too technical and maybe a little boring

Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure that the message is the right one and this will be my blogging topic of the coming weeks.

In the meantime, you can have a look at the powerpoint

I’m a PC and I admire CPB

Philippe — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:24:51 +0000

I’ve never seen so much talking about Microsoft. Actually, after almost 3 years at Microsoft I never talked so much about Microsoft myself… This is maybe the reason why I don’t receive comments on my blog anymore . CPB managed amazingly to put Microsoft at the center of the conversations. First with the Seinfeld/Bill Gates series and now with the “PC pride” (aka Life without walls).

Of course, Microsoft won’t become the coolest brand in the world overnight (see this post).

Yesterday evening I tried to explain to my son the concepts of reason and passion and the strange relations between those two concepts. And the PC/Mac dichotomy is much more about passion than about reason. I really like this quote on youtube by a user called prmd142 who wrote: ”Get over it people…. buy only Apple products… Apple will eradicate poverty from the world… it’ll bring peace & prosperity to everyone… Steve Jobs is God’s messanger…. He alone can lead you to salvation… amen! “. Prmd meant this as a joke of course but I’m pretty sure it’s the state of mind of a lot a Mac users who really believe that, for some reasons, Apple is not truly a capitalist company.

I’m not a Mac. I’m a PC and I practice brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I’m a PC and I don’t shave every day, I’m a PC and I thank you for reading this post.

David Armano and me: A long story

Philippe — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:16:44 +0000

If I had to rank the bloggers on the quality of their content, Peter Kim and David Armano would be on top of my list.

About Armano, look at this funny technorati bug:

14137 days ago, I was 4 weeks away from being born. Time flies…

A campaign about nothing

Philippe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:15:41 +0000

Chapter 2 is online. Jerry and Bill are already back for the second episode of the Seinfeld-Microsoft saga. This time it’s a 4.30 minutes episode and it’s even more seinfeldish than the previous one.

Episode 2 will be even more praised and hated than Episode 1 and that’s OK.

I had a good laugh, I hope you will

Edit: I like what Dion Hughes wrote about the campaign after the first episode:

Everyone is piling on. When was the last time this many people had anything to say, positive or negative, about a Microsoft communication?

read Dion’s full post

Back to the very basic: the banner

Philippe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:45:10 +0000

I received from IIR Middle east 2 banners (1 gif and 1 jpeg) to promote the New Media Event. I don’t think I have ever written something about banners. Few bloggers do. Writing something constructive on the classical banner format might seem almost indecent nowadays. Performance deals represent more than 50% of the american internet revenues and conversational marketing is the only way to go according to the blogosphere.

But according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers: 45% of the total internet revenues are still CPM revenues (US data 2007). A large part of those revenues still come from “classical” banners (read non-rich media)

Of course, the Click-Through Rates are not what they used to be but that’s rather a good news than a bad news for display advertising. So… even if the banner is not hyped up, it’s still out there.

Early august, the dutch website marketingonline.nl published a list of best practice advices released by Microsoft Advertising Netherlands and Metrixlab. The best practice has been determined by impact studies among surfers. The criteria’s to determine the impact were memorization, attention, appreciation and the classical campaign metrics (delta on brand awareness and purchase intent).

Based on that research, here are some best practices I found interesting:

bigger formats have more impact
Logo and brand receive more attention if they are not permenantly present
Avoid multiple loops in your animated banners
Banners with people on it score better
Interaction possibility influences purchase intent and likeability
the “click here”-mention has a negative effect

Is the New Media Event a best practice case? Hmm, not sure but the event will rock!

Small screen, big opportunity

Philippe — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:01:11 +0000

Dynamic Logic and Millward brown already published very interesting studies on the impact of online video advertising… by far the most impactfull online format on the traditional campaign metrics (brand awareness, ad awareness, purchase intent,…). We also know that the pre-roll advertising if they are not too long (less than 20 seconds) are very much accepted by the users.

On august 21st, Dynamic Logic presented the first Mobile advertising impact averages. Surprisingly, the deltas are even better than the video deltas.

The sample is still limited (aggregation of 21 impact studies) and mobile advertising benefits from the youth, the innovativity and the scarcity of the format.

Nonetheless, seen this result, you might expect high CPMs and probably high returns on mobile formats.

Am I a Saturn ring brain?

Philippe — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:29:39 +0000

I might be the biggest non-american Seinfeld (and Larry David) fan alive and I was extremely happy to hear recently that Seinfeld had been chosen to defend the image of Microsoft.

Here is the first and already controversial Seinfeld/Microsoft video. The Youtube statistics are impressive. The rating is average and there are some critics on the ad. but that’s probably partially because people like to hate Microsoft. I can already tell you that it’s gonna be less popular in Europe than in the US. Personally, I’m happy to see Microsoft going in that direction and see a Microsoft advertising where you don’t hear the word “technology”

Also read this great analysis by Noah Brier (link found thanks to Geert)

Facebook facts

Philippe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:46:17 +0000

Kudos to Matt Dickman who released a free ebook with essential data about Facebook.

The first part of the 24 pages ebook covers the stats (reach and socio-demo) of Facebook and the second part explains the marketing possibilities. What I really like about Matt’s work is that he’s only presenting facts.

Here is the link where you’ll find 2 versions (high and low def) of Matt’s ebook. Enjoy!

Content and Connection

Philippe — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:10:08 +0000

I’m trying to find a meaningful way to classify the social networks. I consider that the fundamental axis in Rooted in content (you can clearly enjoy video sharing websites without interacting with anyone. Those sites are based on taxonomies/keywords and tags)/Rooted in connection (the experience is based on links you make/have with other people). The second axis I’m using is the classical Professional/casual.

Here’s a first draft:

My idea isn’t to make a mapping for the sake of it but look into the best way to communicate in social networks according to their position on the map.

It’s still work in progress and I post it hoping to gather feedback. Do you think such a typology makes any sense? Is casual/professional a good axis? Do you feel that there are specific strategies for each type of social network… Or is that kind of approach totally useless?